South Korea, the United States and Japan will conduct a trilateral military exercise in waters off the Korean Peninsula, a South Korean lawmaker revealed Wednesday. The South Korean, US navies and the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force are set to stage an anti-submarine warfare exercise on Friday in international waters of the East Sea, Rep. Ahn Gyu-back of the opposition Democratic Party of Korea said on Facebook. Ahn said the trilateral exercise will be staged outside of the Korean Theater of O

North Korea may conduct a seventh nuclear test after China’s party congress in October but before the US midterm elections in November, the South Korean spy agency said on Wednesday. South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said North Korea’s completion of restoring Tunnel No.3 at the Punggye-ri nuclear testing site has increased the chance of a nuclear test during a closed-door briefing to the parliamentary intelligence committee. The NIS said North Korea could conduct a se

North Korea claimed Monday that the United States compelled the country to adopt a first-use nuclear doctrine and vowed to continue military buildup in a tit-for-tat move against the US’ “hostile policy.” At the UN General Assembly, the claim was immediately dismissed by South Korea, but North Korea repeatedly clarified that it no longer seeks to discuss Korean Peninsula affairs with the Yoon Suk-yeol government. North Korean Ambassador to the United Nations Kim Song underscore

South Korea and the United States began four days of combined naval exercises, including a US aircraft carrier, off the Korean Peninsula’s east coast on Monday to enhance allied military capabilities against North Korean threats. They are the first such drills staged in South Korean waters since 2017. “The exercises were designed to demonstrate the South Korea-US alliance’s strong will to counter North Korean provocations and improve the capabilities of the two navies to carry

Cross-border cargo trains between North Korea and China have resumed operations after a five-month hiatus, China’s Foreign Ministry confirmed Monday. The confirmation came after South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported that a freight train loaded with supplies was seen departing from the Chinese border city of Dandong and crossing the China-North Korea Friendship Bridge into Sinuiju in North Korea on Monday morning. Wang Wenbin, a spokesman at the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said C

BUSAN – The US Navy’s nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan arrived in South Korea on Friday morning as South Korea and the United States seek to improve the allies’ combat readiness and deterrence against mounting threats from North Korea and regional security challenges. With a total of around 4,900 crew members and 90 aircraft, the USS Ronald Reagan, a 100,000-metric ton nuclear-powered supercarrier, and its carrier strike group docked at a naval base in the sou

North Korea’s Defense Ministry said that the country has never supplied weapons to Russia and denounced the US for spreading “groundless” rumors, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported Thursday. An unnamed vice director general of the General Bureau of Equipment at North Korea’s Defense Ministry issued a pronouncement on Wednesday to refute the US’ recent public statements on Russia’s request for North Korea to provide rockets and artillery shells,

The United States will respond to arms supplies by North Korea and Iran to Russia with further sanctions to block Russia’s efforts to evade economic sanctions to illegally replenish its depleted stocks of weapons, senior US government officials said Tuesday. At a congressional hearing, US senators and senior officials at the Treasury and Justice departments took note of Russia’s pursuit to procure military equipment for its troops in Ukraine from the cash-strapped countries subject t

A US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier will stage military exercises with South Korean warships in South Korean waters later in the month for the first time since 2017 to strengthen the alliance’s readiness and deterrence against North Korea, South Korea’s Navy announced on Monday. The US Navy’s USS Ronald Reagan, a 100,000-metric ton nuclear-powered supercarrier, and its strike group will arrive at a naval base in the southern city of Busan on Friday morning. The port visit by

South Korea and the United States warned of an “overwhelming and decisive response” to any nuclear attack by North Korea at high-level strategic talks on Friday, denouncing North Korea’s first-use nuclear doctrine as an “escalatory and destabilizing messaging.” The two countries held the meeting of the Extended Deterrence Strategy and Consultation Group between South Korean and US vice ministers of foreign affairs and defense on Friday in Washington for the first ti

South Korea and the United States agreed to enhance cooperation in defense science and technology to counter emerging threats and establish a high-level dialogue channel to regularly discuss the issue, South Korea’s Defense Ministry announced Thursday. South Korea’s Vice Defense Minister Shin Beom-chul separately met US Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Heidi Shyu and Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment William LaPlante on Wednesday at the h

South Korea and the United States will discuss “concrete and stronger measures” to counter North Korea’s existential and mounting threats and enhance the viability of the US extended deterrence at the upcoming high-level strategic talks, senior South Korean officials said. The two countries will hold a vice ministerial-level meeting of the Extended Deterrence Strategy and Consultation Group, or EDSCG, in Washington on Friday for the first time since January 2018. “South K

North Korea has operated and expanded its key uranium enrichment facility at the Yongbyon nuclear complex, the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency said Monday, reiterating North Korea’s readiness to conduct a nuclear test. Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the agency has observed multiple indications that suggest North Korea’s pursuit to produce the plutonium and uranium required to manufacture nuclear weapon

South Korea’s unification minister on Thursday proposed to North Korea to hold inter-Korean talks over reunions of separated families at an early date, hoping that the meeting could serve as an opportunity to lift inter-Korean relations from a yearslong deadlock. Unification Minister Kwon Young-se said the Yoon Suk-yeol government hopes to hold a face-to-face inter-Korean meeting between the authorities “as soon as possible to have a candid discussion on humanitarian issues” in

The Yoon Suk-yeol government seeks to develop trilateral security cooperation among South Korea, the United States and Japan to the next level and normalize defense cooperation with Japan to counter North Korea’s rapidly escalating and existential missile and nuclear threats. South Korea wants to take it up a notch, but at the same time, it sees fence-mending with Japan as indispensable for bilateral and trilateral security cooperation to be “sustainable” and more robust, South

South Korean and Japanese vice defense ministers will hold a rare in-person meeting this week in Seoul for the first time in six years and discuss long pending issues, including the radar lock-on dispute in 2018, and defense and security cooperation. Japanese Vice Minister of Defense for International Affairs Masami Oka will visit Seoul to participate in the three-day Seoul Defense Dialogue 2022 which is set to begin on Tuesday. South Korean Vice Defense Minister Shin Beom-chul will meet Oka on

South Korea has begun the process of providing full-time, unfettered overland access to a military base that hosts the US-made Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-ballistic missile system in earnest as of Sunday.The move is part of the South Korean president’s pledge to “normalize” the operation of the THAAD base in Soseong-ri, Seongju County, North Gyeongsang Province, by the end of August. Around 10 vehicles carrying construction equipment, an oil tank and military perso

North Korean commanders of paramilitary and reserve forces gathered for a full-scale meeting in Pyongyang for the first time in three years amid the “constant threat of war,” the state media reported Wednesday. The participants pledged to strengthen their combat capabilities for “all-people resistance.” The sixth “Active Leading Personnel of the Worker-Peasant Red Guards” meeting was held at the April 25 House of Culture for two days on Monday and Tuesday, the

North Korea appears to have temporarily stopped work to reactivate an unused tunnel at the Punggye-ri nuclear testing site, likely due to recent heavy rains, a Washington-based think tank said Monday. Commercial satellite images acquired on Aug. 24 indicated that road construction to Tunnel No. 4 remained suspended at North Korea’s main nuclear testing site in Punggye-ri in Kilju County of North Hamgyong Province, the CSIS Korea Chair, which runs the Beyond Parallel project, said in an onl

South Korea’s Defense Ministry has proposed to raise expenditures on establishing an indigenous three-axis defense system by 9.4 percent amid North Korea’s mounting missile and nuclear threats, but has left a controversial project of locally building a light aircraft carrier out of the spending bill. The overall defense budget for 2023 approved by the Cabinet on Tuesday morning set a 4.6 percent year-on-year increase to around 57.1 trillion won ($42.3 billion), the Defense Ministry s